COLIN CHAPMAN, the founder of Lotus Cars, was one of motor racing's most influential engineers. He summed up his philosophy as "simplify, then add lightness". A stripped-down, featherweight car might be slower on the straights than a beefy muscle-machine, he reasoned. But it would be faster everywhere else. Between 1962 and 1978 Lotus won seven Formula One constructors championships. It appears to be an uncommon insight. A paper published in Nature suggests that humans struggle with subtractive thinking. When asked to improve something-a Lego-brick structure, an essay, a golf course or a university-they tend to suggest adding new things rather than stripping back what is already there, even when additions lead to sub-par results. The research was motivated by everyday observation rather than psychological theory, says Gabrielle Adams, the paper's first author, who cites folk wisdom such as "less is more" and "keep it simple". Perhaps the need for such reminders was evidence of a blind spot in people's thinking?
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